best cruise to santorini?

I'm interesting in Celebrity reflection , royal caribbean jewel of the sea , norwegian spirit. Which one is the best choice?

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The smallest of them where you can afford whatever room will give you the ability to be the first person off the ship. Otherwise you'll spend half of your port time waiting to get off, waiting to fake the funicular up to the top, and waiting to take it back down and waiting to tender back to the ship. I'm guessing that on a larger ship you could easily spend four hours standing in lines on Santorini. Also it's not a big island and easily overrun when a larger ship is in port.

We stopped there on our Windstar cruise, and that was the only port we actually had to wait a few minutes for the tender. The ship isn't allowed to use their own, and the tender workers at Santorini have no sense of urgency--at all. When it is time for their break they will take it, even if there are 1500 people waiting to get in or off.

My best alive is ditch the idea of a large ship and find one with a capacity of under 500.

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Welcome to Cruise Critic!

Which is best...McDonald's or Burger King? Starbucks or Peets? Ford or Chevy?

Hopefully you get the point...this topic is totally subjective, and based upon your personal needs and wants, which we know nothing of. Generally, Med cruises are very port intensive, so the ship matters a little less. Time in port is a more important criteria to many people.

What else is on the itinerary? Are there other ports that interest you? What fits your budget? Do you have any experience with any cruise line?

Smaller ships are a great goal, but not always realized, or realistic. And, being on a small ship doesn't help much if the day you are at Santorini, there are 3 other large ships in.

I'm interesting in Celebrity reflection , royal caribbean jewel of the sea , norwegian spirit. Which one is the best choice?

 

 

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You really should be on the Greece forum, but the previous two answers have good advice. If your trip begins or ends in Athens, you might want to explore flying out to Santorini for 2 or 3 days. That is the best way to visit. It does not have to be expensive. Here is a really good website with great ideas for DIY tavel in Greece. http://greecetravel.com/

FYI, there is a web site which will tell you what ships are planning on porting at Santorini and their capacity. There are some days that there will be over 10,000 visitors. There are other days where only one small ship is visiting until late afternoon. When we were there it was all 221 of us. As we were getting ready to leave the island around 4:00 pm, a European cruise line had just come into port and was disgorging 3000 people, 100 at a time in the tender. Do the math. I'm guessing that some of those passengers never even got to leave the ship that day.

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I'm broadly in agreement with previous posts. though................

1. Perhaps they are over-egging the problem - or mebbe they were just plain unlucky.

2. There are ways to avoid the lines.

We've found the tendering to be quick & efficient.

Ducklite & I rarely disagree, but I will on this occasion. Don't do the math with 3000 passengers and a tender carrying 100 because..........

- there will be several tenders plying back & forth

http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-13705859-stock-footage-santorini-greece-june-tenders-move-back-and-forth-from-a-cruise-ship-in-the-santorini.html

- some tenders hold carry about 200.

- those on ship's tours don't use those local tenders to disembark so they can be discounted. They use (usually) ship's tenders which take them to the ferry harbour of Athinios, a couple of miles down the coast where the road comes down to the sea.

Yes, the last person off will have waited at least an hour, probably longer. So the answer is not to be amongst the last off.

Those on ship's excursions are returned to Fira, at the top of the zig-zag path & cable-car. More about the path & cable-car later, but although ship's tour passengers will be taking the same tenders back to the ship as the independent cruisers, folk return to the ship very a much wider time-frame than disembarkation so lines for tenders back aren't so significant.

Yes, there are usually lines to go up in the cable-car. But alternatives are.....

- riding the mules up the zig-zag path, although again lines for the mules ("donkeys") may build.

- walking up the zig-zag path. But it's not an option I would recommend.

- taking a local boat from the tender pier a couple of miles up the coast to a little harbour below Oia. The boat ticket includes a bus ride from that little harbour up to Oia. But there's no return boat to the tender pier.

- taking a ship's tour, which is direct to Athinios harbour and the waiting buses.

Getting back to the ship is much more problematic.

Those on ship's tours aren't tendered back to the ship from Athinios (I have no idea why? :confused:)

There's no boat service from Oia (again I have no idea why :confused:)

Few donkeys are available to go down to the pier.

so your choices are

- the cable-car. This is grossly over-subscribed and yes you can be stood in line for literally hours.

- walk down the zig-zag path. Takes about 25 minutes. Being downhill it's not strenuous, the path is wide, not too steep, and it has waist-high walls. Very few donkeys late in the day. Wonderful views too. But you do need to watch out for the path's occasional shiny & slippery stones & best to keep a steadying hand on the wall. Easy to avoid stepping in any donkey doo-doo's, but when dried the wind can whip up the occasional cloud of the stuff. I don't know how easy that path when wet or in the dark.

Dia "zig-zag path Santorini" into Google-images.

If you are tolerably fit, get back to the cable-car a bare minimum of half an hour before last-tender-time. Probably the line will be too long, but you then have time to walk down the zig-zag path.

That is undoubtedly the way to make best use of your time on Santorini.

If you have walking difficulties, I can only suggest that you get back to the cable-car in very good time. If the line is short & you have hours to spare, enjoy a drink and panoramic view from the terrace of the bar by the cable-car, and keep an eye on that line.

Yes, there can be a lot of ships in. But many are in for only half-a-day and they do seem to plan to be there at different times of the day. So if say your last-tender-time is late afternoon, the line for the cable-car back down the cliff will not be impacted by a ship which departs early afternoon.

Santorini is busy with folk vacationing there and day-trippers from other islands, not just cruisers. So, other than up & down the cliff to the tender jetty, the number of cruise ships won't make the huge difference that it does on some small Caribbean islands.

Yes, a small ship usually means quicker tendering - but, as Bruce's reply, it doesn't solve the other logistics..

And yes, flying to Santorini for a few days would be great.

But neither is always possible or affordable.

Not the easiest island for cruisers, but a fabulous place to visit and well worth the grief.

Just MHO as always ;)

JB :)

When we were there, we came into port at maybe 8:00 am. No other ships in port. We left around 5:00 pm. A Pullmantur ship had come into port just as we were going down the funicular, around 3:30 (15:30). We saw the first tender bring people ashore. It was a larger tender, yes, it might have held 200 people, although 150 seems closer. There was a small tender that held around 50 people. That smaller tender was being used for the Wind Surf. We shopped at a couple of the shops and bought some postcards and stamps while we waited for the tender to our ship. We saw the larger tender make a round trip, then took our tender over. We went to the bar on the back deck and continued to watch. At one point around 4:30, the larger tender went off duty, and the smaller tender was being used for the Pullmantur ship. It took on the last group of passengers and our security people and brought them to the Surf, and then went back to the Pullmantur ship. At this point, even using the capacity of 200 John Bull claims, only 450 or so people had gone ashore. We saw none of the ships tenders leave to take passengers elsewhere. As we left port around 5:00 (it could have been a bit later, the larger tender came back and was loading. So the ship had been in port for two ours and less than half it's passengers had gotten off. By then the line for the funicular up was quite long, extending all the way down to the end of the dock area, and the donkeys were done for the day. We saw maybe a dozen people walking up the mountain.

Considering they were in port until probably 11:00 at the latest, it didn't look good for the people who were last off to do anything more than a cursory look around. We were told to plan on two hours minimum to take the funicular down and catch the last tender due to the lines that form. Had a large ship been in port and leaving around the same time, I certainly understand why.

Personally I like the idea of simply flying into Santorini and spending a few days there. The island and it's history are fascinating, and there is plenty to occupy that amount of time. We are hoping to get back there sometime and decamp for a week of exploring the many historical sites in far more depth than we could from a cruise ship.

The reason the boats only go to Oia is that they continue on around the island, just like the bus does.

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On our MSC cruise in September, we booked a ship tour so we avoided the cable car on the way up and on the way back as they bussed us back to the pier we had landed at that morning. It was a good tour anyway but worth it to avoid any cable car scrums.

Oia was beautiful, the ruins at Akrotiri interesting and the views from Santos winery spectacular but I don't know if Santorini would hold my interest for 2 or 3 days or if I would go out of my way to visit it again.

The Celebrity Reflection Eastern Med cruise is superb...one of the best vacations of my life. NOT TO BE MISSED! While I've cruised NCL a lot and I love them, the Reflection Eastern Med itinerary and ship experience can't be beaten. You should do it for sure.

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